


Le Tigre Rouge

by abi z (azephirin), azephirin



Category: Original Work
Genre: Age Difference, Alcohol, Christmas, Crossgen, Cunnilingus, Erotica, F/M, Female Protagonist, Fingerfucking, First Time, Infidelity, Moral Ambiguity, New York, POV First Person, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-28
Updated: 2009-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-03 21:46:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/abi%20z, https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/azephirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had beautiful, weather-beaten hands, scarred by twenty-five years in kitchens, longer than I'd been alive: burns, a couple of near-disasters with cleavers and carving knives, a strange flat spot on his right thumb. I'd catalogued them all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Le Tigre Rouge

**Author's Note:**

> This story is copyright © me, 2006.

He was in his early forties, executive chef at Le Tigre Rouge in the lower reaches of West Broadway in Tribeca, given to excessive drinking and various other vices, married. He had beautiful, weather-beaten hands, scarred by twenty-five years in kitchens, longer than I'd been alive: burns, a couple of near-disasters with cleavers and carving knives, a strange flat spot on his right thumb. I'd catalogued them all.

I was nineteen, washing dishes Sunday through Wednesday to put myself through the New School. It wasn't the prime shift by any means, but it was what I could get as a newbie (I'd been working in kitchens since I was fourteen, but that didn't matter here), and sometimes I subbed for Carlos or Ajay, who worked Tuesday through Saturday, when they had a sick kid or something. Then Ajay's family talked him into going back to NYU for his engineering degree, so he quit, and I started working Tuesday through Saturday with Carlos, sometimes prepping for the sous chef or the saucier if someone didn't show up. Then, Christmas Eve, the prep cook went on a bender and didn't show up for work. First Nate called his cell phone, then his land line, and then his mom's house, but he was lying low and it was clear we'd never find him. Then he called the off-duty cooks, going up the ranks from the second-string prep cook on up to the sous chef, whose wife was about eight months and three weeks pregnant, and whom Nate had given Christmas Eve off. But Evan's wife had gone into labor; everyone else was out of town or not answering their phones. When I heard something crash against the office wall, I knew he'd thrown the phone at it. I walked in there, put my hands in my back pockets, and said, "I'll do it."

"You have to wash the fucking dishes, remember?"

"Call Juan," I said. "He'll sub for me. He's in town and he hates his family. And you know I can do it."

"Actually," he said, "I don't know that you can do it. But I know that, short of calling in favors that no one owes me, you may be the only option."

I was the only option, and I did it, and we survived Christmas Eve dinner by the skin of our teeth.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Cleaning up was about what I imagine reconstructing London after the Blitz was like. The sommelier brought back all the bottles of wine that hadn't been finished off—and a few that had never been opened at all—and the bartender gave us several nearly full bottles of vodka, scotch, amaretto, and gin. We didn't save open bottles of wine from night to night, but there was no reason not to keep the liquor. But none of us protested. I finished off a half-full bottle of malbec and had a few shots of amaretto, which no one else would sacrifice their machismo to touch, at least not where anyone could see. Jacob, the saucier, laughed at me, but he had three shots when no one was looking. He found some Coke and we mixed the vodka into it, which was a waste of Grey Goose, but at that point we were too drunk to discern quality.

I finished cleaning up my area, helped a couple other people out with theirs, and then went to find Nate, to see about him letting us all get the hell out of there and go home.

The door to the office was closed, which meant that he was inside. It wasn't locked, I discovered. I walked inside.

He had collapsed on the couch, his long legs sprawled out in front of him, his arms flung across the back. He'd taken off his chef's whites to reveal the plain white undershirt underneath. The books for the night were neatly closed on the desk, and the bag was ready to go to the bank. Usually Nate and Evan did that, if it was a Saturday night, or we left it in the safe for the Brinks truck to pick up the next day, if it was a weeknight. But tomorrow was Christmas, and a Saturday, so the bag would have to go tonight or else wait two days.

I thought maybe he was asleep, but when I said, "Nate," he opened his eyes without blinking.

I was about to ask him if we could all go home. But there was a strange silence, and we watched each other without speaking. I reached behind myself and closed the door. His eyes stayed on me. I walked over to him, and he looked up at me with something like fear.

It was the first time I had ever seen him afraid of anything.

He brought his arms down from the back of the sofa, but didn't seem to know where to put them. I had never seen him, at any time, without complete confidence in his own movements. I realized that he was nervous. I realized that I was the cause of it.

I walked closer until we were nearly touching. And then I sank down onto him, straddling him where he was sitting. I felt him harden, and simultaneously I felt his hands settle on the small of my back. I leaned down and kissed him, winding his salt-and-pepper hair through my fingers, and his hands slid underneath my shirt and up the curve of my spine. I could feel the calluses against my skin, and I shivered. I wanted the roughness—but also the precision and surety—of his hands everywhere on me. I felt him gathering the hem of my t-shirt and I raised my arms, ready to be bared.

"Jesus Christ," he said, pulling back from me, dropping the cloth from his fingers. But his hands were still on my back, solid against my skin. He looked up at me. "God," he said, "you're so young."

I didn't answer. I took his earlobe in my mouth and sucked on it gently, then ran my tongue over the rim of his ear. I heard his breath go in swiftly. I kissed my way down his throat, letting my hands wander over his chest, and when I did the same thing to his other ear, this time he didn't hesitate when he pulled my shirt off. It landed on the floor, he unhooked my bra and I shrugged it off, and he took one of my nipples into his mouth and cupped the other one in his hand. He worked his tongue around the piercing, and I let him hear my sharp gasp. I slid my hands onto the strangely soft skin underneath his t-shirt; it was so smooth that it might have belonged to another person entirely. When I pulled up his shirt, he didn't resist, and then he was half naked against me. The muscles of his chest and back were as long and as lean as the rest of him, and the bristly hair was the same salt-and-pepper as that on his head. I had never been with a man this much older than I was, more than twice my age, and I was fascinated by the sparse gray hairs against the wiriness of his body.

I found his tiny male nipples with my fingers, and though I didn't know what he liked—did not know him at all, really, except for the fact that he was married and my boss and somewhat famous and mildly terrifying—I did not hesitate to twist them, hard enough to hurt, and was not entirely surprised when he moaned (biting his lip to keep quiet, but still loudly enough for me to hear) and his head fell back against the sofa. You have to be a bit of a masochist, I think (with a healthy admixture of sadism), in order to make a living as a chef. I bit him on the cinnamon skin of his shoulder, leaving the marks of my teeth just above his clavicle, and he pulled me, hard, against him.

He turned his attention to the front of my jeans, and when he fumbled, I cursed myself for wearing button-flies. Most women don't, and though I had the idea that Nate had disrobed a number of people during his lifetime, I suspected that the list had been exclusively female. I reached down and finished the job for him, then started with the button at the top of his jeans. But then the rough tips of his fingers made their way between my legs, and when they found what they were looking for, brushing my clit with a light touch that only the most well-trained of hands can manage, it was my turn to moan, the muscles in my neck giving out and my head dropping back.

He stroked me gently, rhythmically, and I rocked back and forth against his fingers. I wanted them inside me, their skill and their roughness—I wanted him inside me, too. I imagined that his cock would be as long and as able as the rest of him.

"Hey, Nate!" Jacob yelled from outside the door. "We ready to close up or what?"

"Lock up and get the hell out of here," Nate called back. His voice sounded completely normal—but he was looking at me the entire time he said it, and his fingers hadn't stopped what they were doing.

"Want me to come to the bank with you? They'll wait for us at the bar."

"No. I've got some stuff to do. I'll take the bag later."

I swear Jacob was snickering when he said, "Alright. 'Night. Merry Christmas, feliz Navidad, and all that shit."

Nate and I were silent, and that broken moment could have been the end of it. Then Nate pushed me onto my back and yanked down my jeans with one hand, and I kicked them the rest of the way off and suddenly I was naked. I wanted him to take down his with the other hand, wanted him to push my legs apart and fuck me hard and voracious with some of his clothes still on. And he did push my legs apart, but to bury his face between them, licking me the way you might expect the most notorious gourmand in New York to enjoy a woman. He was by no means the first person to go down on me, but he was the fiercest, and the edge of his tongue was precise and insistent against my clit. I clenched one hand in his hair and kept my other arm across my mouth in case Jacob hadn't quite left yet. But when Nate thrust three fingers into me—I was so wet and they were so sure that there was no pain, just an intense shock of pleasure trebled by gentle suction as he kept giving me head—I arched off the sofa cushions, I couldn't help it, and the crook of my elbow did not completely muffle my cry. I fucked myself against them; our rhythm matched and it was perfect, perfect, and I came hard around his fingers and against his tongue, and came again, shuddering, and this time I didn't care whether Jacob and Juan and the entirety of the restaurant and in fact the entire block and the entire neighborhood were listening; it was too good not to shout.

My breath was coming in gasps, but I remembered to take my hand out of his hair, and when he looked up at me, his face was wet with my essence. I didn't care. I pulled him up and kissed him, and I could taste myself on his lips, and feel how erect he still was. I turned us so that I was on top, and I broke away to unzip his jeans the rest of the way and reach inside for his cock.

He was every bit as long as I'd hoped, and I wrapped my fist around him and jacked him, stopped to lick my palm, and then kept on doing it. Soon there was the slickness of his own warm pearlescent fluid, and I skated my palm around the soft head of his penis, listening with satisfaction as his breath caught. Then I put my hands on his hips and pushed down his jeans and boxer-briefs, pulling them off along with his socks. (There is nothing more ridiculous than a naked man wearing socks.) And then I knelt between his thighs and slid my lips over his cock.

I moved up and down on his shaft like I was fucking him good and slow, and I ran my fingers lightly over his balls and the insides of his thighs. His hands descended onto my head and I knew he wanted me to go faster, but I resisted, teasing him, making him work for the pleasure I was giving, making him rise to meet me and follow the rhythm I set. I didn't have anything slick, or I would have done him with my fingers at the same time, sliding them inside one by one, maybe making it hurt a little. But I could still rub a finger against his opening, and that got me a sharp nonverbal gasp and a buck of the hips I was sure he didn't intend.

And that was when he took control again, flipping us back over, gathering my wrists into one strong hand above my head, and then driving his cock, finally, inside me. God, it felt amazing, and I wrapped my legs around his hips and matched him thrust for thrust. He used his other hand to work my nipple, and when I managed to get my eyes open, I saw that he was looking straight at me, the gray of his eyes as intense as I had ever seen them in the kitchen. He let my wrists go, braced himself on both elbows, and fucked me with steady, measured strokes that made me writhe against him in a wordless plea for more, faster, please.

I moved my hands to his ass and pushed him deeper into me, and I felt myself start to spiral into another orgasm. It was slower, this one, building rather than exploding, and I threw my head back and flexed my fingers into the curves of his ass and let it carry me. And it carried Nate over, too: He lost his even, precise rhythm and moved fast and relentlessly, greedily, and shouted as he came. And then he, among the most iconoclastic of men, did what every other man does after hard, ferocious sex: He collapsed onto me, panting.

He was slick with sweat, and as we caught our breath, I traced the muscles of his back up to the nape of his neck, where the damp hair curled. When my pulse had slowed to something resembling normal, I tilted his chin with my hand and kissed him, then sat up a bit. He kissed my breasts and then my mouth, and we got up and got dressed.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

We turned off the lights and locked up. We didn't avoid each other's glances, but neither did we speak. He put the bank bag into his backpack (cheap and innocuous, it was frequently used for the night runs) and we went outside. I was ready to walk up to Canal and get the A train to the L into Williamsburg, but he hailed me a cab, handed the driver a twenty, and put me into it. I told the cabbie Wythe Avenue and North Tenth Street, Brooklyn, then turned to look back. Nate had hailed another cab and was getting into it.

It was almost three o'clock in the morning when I got home. I smelled like restaurant and sex. I wanted to tell my roommate what had just happened, but she was asleep. I showered, then set my alarm for ten a.m. I was going to visit my family in Queens—and I was also going to have to figure out how to get a prescription for a morning-after pill on Christmas Day. But I was too tired right now to even think about that, or about what it was going to be like to look Nate in the face the next time I had to work, or about the fact that I'd just aided and abetted someone in cheating on his wife.

I slept.


End file.
